


Bound - Loki fanfic

by ilse_writes



Series: Loki & Ylva alternate universe stories [3]
Category: Loki - Fandom
Genre: Adventure, Asgard, F/M, Fluff, Hiding, Romance, spin-off from Coffee & Books, teenage loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 23:42:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17273372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilse_writes/pseuds/ilse_writes
Summary: Teenage Loki is being punished for tricking his brother. Again. Ylva approaches him...





	Bound - Loki fanfic

**Author's Note:**

> This short fanfic is a spin-off from my fanfic Coffee & Books, featuring Loki and my OC Ylva. You don't have to read Coffee & Books to enjoy this one ;-)

Bound 

It was meant to be humiliating, making Loki watch the party in shackles. Yet she couldn’t find it shameful; he didn’t seem to think so either. He was watching the gathered people with disdain, the flickering light of the fire not even reaching his outstretched legs because he was that far away. His face was in the shadows, though she could see the hard glimmer in his eyes. He was angry, his pride was probably hurt, yet he still managed to look like he had planned to be put in the corner like that. 

Ylva didn’t really know why the youngest son was bound this time. Maybe he’d stabbed Thor, or had made his older brother believe he was a snake again. Loki was always scheming to thwart the plans of Thor and his friends. If they didn’t include him, he made sure to include himself somehow. Ylva was sure he would deny her theory fiercely, another reason to make her think she was right.  
She thought a lot about Loki, probably way more than he would ever think about her. He knew who she was, of course, being Fandral’s younger sister she was about the same age as Loki and they more or less hung out with the same people. She also saw him in the library often, when the lessons were done and they had to do homework. Thor always snuck out and went to the training grounds; Loki didn’t, though he didn’t really do his homework either. He was always reading, trying to go deeper or further or beyond the stuff their teachers talked about. Of course he had private lessons, he wasn’t in her class; he was a prince after all and she was definitely not royal. Yet she didn’t think his lessons differed much from hers, she had seen him with the same textbooks she had.  
She saw a lot. She saw how he licked his finger before turning a page. She saw how he sometimes frowned when he was reading, or how he bit his lip when he came upon something particularly complicated. She also saw how the corners of his mouth turned up when he read something he liked, or the way his eyes lit up when he got excited over a book. She also saw how the young prince - and this was her favourite thing to watch - rested his head in his hand when he got a little tired, his fingers woven in between his dark hair. Tired Loki who enjoyed the book he was reading, that was her favourite image of him. 

He probably barely had any image of her in his head. When someone mentioned her to him he most likely thought of some generic girl, not specifically of a girl with strawberry blonde hair, blue eyes and freckles that became more prominent in the summer. Or a girl that liked the same books as he did. Or a girl that was always trying to come up with something to say to him, but always came up blank whenever his eyes happened to glance over her. He knew of her, but he didn’t know her. 

It might be the mead in her blood, or it might be that the warm night made her bolder, but she had slowly backed away from the merry circle of people around the fire and now she was approaching the trickster prince from the side.  
They had shackled his hands behind the last pole of the fence that divided the sparring area in two. It was not much of a fence; just wooden poles in the ground, connected with a plank nailed against the side of the poles. Loki was sitting on a sandbag or something, it couldn’t be all that comfortable, yet he seemed relatively at ease.

“Hey, Ylva,” he greeted her casually when she came close. It surprised her that he knew her name. They’d never really talked before, apart from the obligatory greetings and a little smalltalk when they found themselves in the same company. 

“Hi,” she said softly, because she felt a little awkward about coming over to him and because she didn’t want any of the others to notice them. The whole point of his punishment was ignoring the boy and that was the opposite of what she was doing.  
She walked past the dark-haired prince and stopped to lean on the fence with a few feet between them. Looking down on him like this she could see how his longish hair curled at his collar; she wanted to touch it, to feel if it really was as soft as it looked. 

 

He had to turn his head a little to look at her, which he did as if they just happened to run in to each other. “Enjoying the party?”  
It sounded like an everyday question. Like he wasn’t being made to sit it out like some lowly criminal who would be dealt with later. His situation reminded her of a Midgardian western story she once read, where the hero went into the tavern for a drink and had the bad guy tied up with the horses outside. Loki had read the same book, she had seen him with it the week after she returned it to the library.

“Nah,” she said. “Volstagg wants to drink all the mead, my brother wants to kiss all the girls,” she gestured with her tankard of mead to the people around the fire, “and everybody listens to your brother’s brawny stories like they’ve not heard them at least ten times before.”

Loki chuckled. “Same old, same old.”

“Precisely.” Ylva took a sip from her mead. The honey drink was warm in her throat.

“Can I have some?” Loki asked, looking at her tankard.

“Oh. Uh, sure.” Ylva pushed herself upright and wanted to walk back to the fire, where a barrel of mead was being held hostage by Volstagg. “I’ll go get you a drink.”

“No, don’t,” he said quickly. “They’ll stop you. Just give me some of yours.”

Ylva started to hold out her tankard to him, though she quickly realised her mistake. What was he gonna do? Hold the rim of the tankard between his teeth and just tip his head back? She rolled her eyes at her own stupidity and walked around the fence to crouch down in front of him. Loki was following her movements and she felt heat creep up her neck; hopefully it was dark enough for him not to notice it. She had never been this close to him before - not when they were alone - and even though he was just watching what she was doing, it felt way too intimate already.  
She angled the tankard to his lips and started to tip it carefully. She couldn’t really see what she was doing, sitting right in front of him and awkwardly trying to avoid touching his legs or any other part of him. The result was a splutter from Loki and mead that ran down his chin and neck. 

“Careful!” he huffed, though he didn’t sound mad. If anything, he sounded a little amused.

“Sorry, sorry,” Ylva whispered hurriedly and before she had thought it through she had her sleeve already bunched up around her hand and wiped his chin dry. Maybe she should have gone easier on the mead tonight.

Loki raised his chin to expose his throat. “I think you missed a spot,” he instructed dryly and when she moved her hand to clean there too they both started to laugh, breaking the tension.  
“Try again,” Loki chuckled, sitting up straighter. “Try not to pour it down my shirt this time.”

Ylva sat more to the side now, her knees pressed to the burlap bag of sand Loki was sitting on. She had to lean on his shoulder a little to get the angle right, but this time he could drink without spilling the honey wine all over him.  
When he pulled back, there was just a little left and Ylva drank it in one swig before putting the tankard down behind her. She sat down on the sandy ground of the sparring pit, wrapping her arms around her knees. They both stared in silence at the people by the fire, watching the lights play over their faces. 

Thor was in the center, easily recognised by his height and blond hair. He was talking animatedly, gesturing wildly with his tankard. Using one of his friends as a prop, he was imitating a fight scene or something.  
Her own brother was there too, a little to the side, a girl in each of his arms. As Ylva watched he whispered something in their ears, one at a time, making them giggle and clutch to him tighter. To her disgust they walked away in the direction of the gardens after that, leaving Ylva without a doubt about their plans once they got to the dark, secluded palace gardens.

She must have made a disapproving sound, because Loki responded understandingly. “Brothers… right?”

“I don’t know what is more disgusting. His slutty behaviour or theirs.”

“They’re just having fun,” Loki shrugged. 

“Can’t be that much fun,” Ylva said curtly. “It’s never the same girl twice. Apparently they’re all no good.”

The prince started to laugh silently, his chest moving up and down. “That is one way to look at it.”

“He’s almost out of girls, I think. Next, he has to move on to guys.” She turned to Loki with a smirk. “You better watch out, pretty boy!”

“You think I’m pretty?” Loki’s smirk became wider as hers disappeared, his perfectly straight teeth white in the dark.  
Ylva scrambled to her feet, heat rushing to her face. She had no witty comeback for this and walking away would only confirm she thought he was handsome, yet it was all she could think of doing right now.  
But she could not stand up straight and go: her dress was stuck. She turned back and tugged at it, only to get two little tugs back in response. Loki was holding the edge of her skirt in his bound hands, it had been in his reach when she was sitting down next to him.  
“Don’t go,” he said and it sounded suspiciously like a plea. “Come on, Ylva, sit down.” He looked from her to the people by the fire. “I could use some company.”

Ylva turned to him and he released the hem of her dress, the fabric pooling around her legs. She didn’t sit down again, yet she had no intention of walking away anymore either. “Why don’t you just teleport out of here?” she asked. “You can do that, right?”

He grimaced. “Not when I’m stuck like this. I’d have to take the whole fence with me, I can’t do that. Yet.” He stuck his chin up with the last word, like it was only a matter of time before he would learn how to do that.

Ylva felt the wood of the fence; it was sturdy enough as a barrier, yet the top plank was simply nailed to the posts. Though he was no muscled warrior like his brother, Loki was strong enough on his own. “You could probably break out, it’s just a wooden railing.”

Loki leaned sideways and inspected the post he was bound to. “I could, though not without making a lot of noise.”

“Can’t you magick the nails out?” Ylva had crouched down next to him on the balls of her feet, taking a closer look at the fence. It was hard to see in the dark, so she felt with her hand how the plank was attached to the pole.

“I’ll add that to my list of things to learn in magic school,” Loki said sarcastically, rolling his eyes at her from his leaning position. “For now, you’ll have to help me.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Ylva answered absentmindedly, trying to make out the heads of the nails in the wood with her fingertips. Her tongue slipped out between her teeth, as always when she was concentrating hard. There were only two nails, about three inches apart. That seemed a bit far apart, so she eased her hand to the back of the plank. She kind of lost her footing for a moment, but Loki didn’t seem to mind that she rested her knee on his thigh to keep herself balanced. Ylva leaned even further over him, to get a better feel of the pole and the plank behind him. The top of Loki’s head just came up to the plank, which was about six inches wide. If she had thought about it in advance, it would have made more sense to get up and walk around Loki to check out the fence; yet she was here now anyway, with enough mead in her system to make her care a little less about what she was doing.  
“Yes! Got it!” Ylva exclaimed, getting hushed by Loki immediately. 

“Quiet,” he hissed. “They’ll hear us.”

Ylva glanced back to the fire, where everyone still seemed occupied with drinking and talking to each other. Nobody was paying attention to the prince or the girl that was practically in his lap by now. She tried not to think too hard about that little fact. Or that Loki had sat up straighter again, which meant his face was closer than before.  
“There is only one nail in this plank,” she whispered at him. “The other one missed the post.”

“Which means even your tiny girl biceps can pry it loose?” Loki teased.  
She hit his arm. Hard.  
“I take that as a yes,” he smirked.

“Fine, I’ll try,” she grumbled, standing up from her crouched position. Ylva pulled her sleeves down to protect her hands and grabbed the plank. Standing next to Loki didn’t give her the right angle, so she had to stand over him to really be able to use her strength. The prince didn’t complain, he kept his head down as she put her weight in to pull at the wood.  
“Next time, remind me to bring a crowbar,” Ylva groaned, jostling the plank. It moved a bit, she was pretty sure she could wrench the nail out if only she pulled hard enough.

At the moment Loki lifted his head to make some joke about her being an excellent sidekick if she carried a crowbar as a weapon, Ylva pulled extra hard and the plank suddenly came loose, hitting Loki in the head.  
She cursed under her breath and instinctively cradled Loki’s head against her to rub over the sore spot at the back of his head, smothering his loud curses in her skirt as an extra benefit.  
“Sorry, sorry!” she whispered. “You should have kept your head down!”

Suddenly Ylva became aware how Loki was shaking under her hands. For a second she thought he was crying, until she heard him laugh. His voice was barely audible with his face hidden in her dress, but she could hear him clear as day. 

 

“Valhalla, Ylva! Does this count as second or third base?!” He nearly choked on his words from laughing.

With an annoyed cry she released him, pushing him back against the pole. Loki slumped against it, heaving with laughter.

Ylva surely hoped nobody would come look why Loki was laughing so hard. What would she say? I hit him in the head and I pulled him against me to console him like a little kid, inadvertently pressing his face in my crotch?  
Gods, what was she doing?! Ylva stepped back and tripped over her dress - or Loki’s feet - and fell flat on her ass between his lower legs. Wonderful, as if she needed to make an even greater fool out of herself!  
Loki took one look at her exasperated face and started laughing again. Ylva couldn’t help but start laughing too and when he pushed her with his foot she easily tipped to the side, pressing her hand over her mouth to try and keep quiet.

It took them a few minutes to gather themselves again, before they could start getting Loki off the fencepost. The prince easily got to his feet and Ylva pulled the plank free from the post so Loki could slip his arms out.  
“Let’s not talk about what just happened ever again,” she stated sternly as he stretched his back; he had been sitting there quite a while. 

“I can’t promise that,” Loki answered with glinting eyes, easily stepping out of her reach as she tried to hit his arm again. “Thanks for helping me out, though. Now we just have to get rid of the shackles.”

Ylva tilted her head to look behind Loki’s back at his bound wrists. It looked like Thor had borrowed the restraints from a prison guard. “Can you pick the lock?”

He shook his head. “Not when it’s behind my back. I’ll have to…”  
He stopped talking and lowered himself to the ground. Ylva bit back a giggle when he wriggled and bent his body as far as it would go with the goal of bringing his arms back to his front. It worked, exposing a fair bit of skin on his back and stomach when his shirt rode up. Or maybe his pants got lower, it was hard to say in the dark, even though Ylva watched with interest.  
“Odin’s beard, I’m gonna feel that tomorrow,” Loki groaned as he stood up again, rolling his shoulders. 

The young prince lifted his wrists up to his face, hoping it would help him see how he could get the restraints off in the dark. Ylva peered at the metal shackles from the side; they looked fairly big around the boy’s wrists.

A cry from someone by the fire startled them both. To Ylva’s horror multiple dark figures were suddenly running towards them, yelling things like “Get them!” and other inaudible cries. 

“We have to run!” she gasped, turning to Loki. 

He looked over her shoulder and then back to her. “Too late,” he exclaimed and then out of the blue he lifted his arms and brought them down around her, the shackles hard against her back. 

She fell against him and as his arms closed her in firmly, she felt a sudden sharp pull on her body. It was like someone yanked her from her feet in one strong tug and at the same time it felt like falling, but falling in a horizontal direction while her stomach went the other way. 

As fast as it came, it was over. Ylva swallowed back some bile, reeling on her feet. Loki still had his arms around her and his face was pressed in the crook of her neck. He held her up, though she did the same for him. “Give me… a second…” the young prince panted, his breath hot on her skin. 

Ylva bunched his shirt in her hands, giving herself something to hold on to in fear of toppling over. “What… what was that?” she asked, after she was sure she wouldn’t retch up the mead when she opened her mouth.

“I’m kinda… proud of myself,” Loki answered out of breath, his head still on her shoulder even though he had to stoop down a little to do that. In fact, Ylva felt he had widened his stance to be lower. “I never… teleported two people at once before.”

“That was teleporting?” Ylva muttered irritatedly. “I hate it.”

His chuckle vibrated against her throat, making her shiver in a very, very good way. He straightened out after that, meaning she had to look up to look him in the eye. Which she didn’t, not right away anyway, because even if you had held a knife to her throat she couldn’t tell you if the featherlight kiss she had felt against her skin before he pulled away was real or not. She had to decide it was a figment of her imagination before she was able to look him in the face again.

Looking Loki in the eye while he still had his arms around her, the shackles resting lightly against the small of her back, turned out to be an impossible task. So Ylva looked at the dark shapes surrounding them. “Where are we?”

“Behind mother’s greenhouse,” Loki said, looking around himself too. He looked down. “I think we’re standing in one of her flowerbeds, better get out before we trample everything.”  
If Ylva had expected him to release her from his embrace, she was wrong. Instead, he simply pressed his arms together to lift her up by her waist and took two big steps to get them out of the queen’s flowerbeds. 

Only after they were standing on the cobblestoned path did he lift his arms so she could step away from him. That meant releasing his shirt too, which she apparently was still holding on to. Ylva awkwardly smoothed the fabric a bit; she couldn’t see it in the dark, but she was pretty sure you could still see where she had held on to it so tightly.

“This way,” he said, gently bumping her shoulder to make her walk with him. They walked around the greenhouse to the entrance. “Key is up there.” The prince nudged his head to the ridge above the door. 

Ylva stood on her toes and felt with her hand until her fingers touched the key. She fumbled it in the keyhole and pushed the door open for them. Loki strode in with purpose, walking to a workbench in the back. It was so dark in here, Ylva could hardly see where she walked.  
The prince lit a green fire in his hand, holding it above the workbench in search for something. “All right, partner,” he said to Ylva, gesturing her over. “Help me search.”

“Partner?” Ylva asked curiously as she approached the workbench. There was a green flame dancing above Loki’s palm; it wasn’t hot, it was just light. 

“My partner in crime,” Loki smirked, bumping her shoulder. “Look for a pin or something.”

Ylva’s brain was a little fried from the combination of mead, teleporting and being manhandled by Loki. Him calling her ‘my partner’ didn’t help at all, even when it was a ‘partner in crime’.  
Together they turned over the contents of the workbench until Ylva found a roll of thin metal wire. “Would this work?”

Loki held his flame closer. “Yes, that would do it. Cut some off and twist it so it’s stronger.”  
He held up a pair of pruning shears for her. Ylva did as he asked and handed Loki the twisted metal pin when she was done. The green light went out when he turned his hands and wriggled the pin in the keyhole of his restraints. Loki grunted a little as he tried to pry the lock open. At one point he lit up another green flame to see what he was doing. His concentrated frown was adorable if you asked Ylva; though it was lucky nobody asked her, she might accidently say it out loud.

Suddenly the lock clicked and the frown on Loki’s face made way for a beautiful smile. The design made it so that Ylva had to help the boy to twist the restraints completely open. They thudded heavily to the ground.  
Loki flexed his freed wrists and suddenly squeezed her face between his hands. “You are a wonderful sidekick!” he exclaimed and let go of her face, paying no attention to Ylva’s bewildered state when he grabbed her hand to pull her with him. “Come on, let’s get out of here!”

A grinning blond Asgardian prince stopped them in their tracks. Thor had his arms crossed in front of his chest, his feet spread apart. He looked a lot like Odin at that moment, were it not for the shit-eating grin on his face. Behind him, some of his friends spilled into the greenhouse. 

“Loki, that’s my little sister you have there,” Fandral said accusingly, coming to stand next to Thor. 

Loki shrugged with a smirk, giving Ylva’s hand a squeeze. “So?”

“So, I don’t know what you told her to convince her to help you escape, but I suggest you cut it out right now.” Fandral took a step forward, as if he wanted to grab them. 

Thor held out his arm to hold Fandral back. “Don’t overreact, my friend. It’s not such a big deal.” The crown prince grinned and turned his attention back to his younger brother. “I’m sure Loki has been nothing but nice to her.”

Ylva didn’t know what to make of the conversation that played out in front of her. It was kind of hard to think with Loki’s fingers wrapped around her hand. He had not let go of her the entire time, he even rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand like it was perfectly normal for them to hold hands.

What happened outside the greenhouse, that was a lot easier to wrap her mind around. On all four sides there were lights all of a sudden, lights that blurred a little in the glass of the greenhouse, yet she recognised the shine of the Einherjar’s armour well enough. The palace guards probably couldn’t see exactly what happened inside the greenhouse, because it was so dark in here, but they sure had some explaining to do. All of them. Neither of them was supposed to be here in the middle of the night, the palace gardens were a forbidden area after dark. This meant trouble. Ylva’s parents would be so mad!  
“The guards are here,” she hissed at Loki, tugging at his hand. 

He looked back at her, grinning wide. “Perfect,” the prince said to her, before he turned back to Thor. “Good luck talking yourself out of this, brother!”  
Before Ylva could protest Loki pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her. She only had time to think ‘oh no, not again’ before her body fell one way and her stomach the other way. 

They came to a standstill just outside the walls of the palace. Ylva held on to Loki - his fingers buried in his biceps this time - while she tried to push her stomach back to where it belonged.  
“You okay?” he asked, sounding less out of breath than the first time. “I think I’m getting better at it.”

“Well, I’m not!” she gasped, pinching his arms as hard as she could. “I still hate it.”

“Not as much as Thor hates having to explain to father why the Einherjar had to pluck him and his friends from the gardens in the middle of the night.” Loki chuckles, his arms loosely around Ylva’s waist. “Breaking and entering in mother’s greenhouse. She’s not gonna like that.”

“Well… thanks for helping me escape then,” Ylva said hesitantly. “Does that make us even?”

Loki smirked. “Sure. We’re partners in crime now, aren’t we?” He moved his arms so his hands rested on her waist. “Think you can stand without falling over now?”  
Ylva nodded, although she regretted it when Loki stepped back from her.  
The prince nudged his chin to something behind her. “That’s where you live, isn’t it?” 

Ylva turned her head to see the buildings behind her. It was a row of houses angled directly at the palace wall. They were not big, but they had nice gardens and the view down the hill to the village was lovely. “Yeah,” she nodded. 

“Thought so,” Loki said with a smile. “Then I’ve properly seen you home. Don’t want to disappoint my mother by having bad manners.” He had the audacity to wink at her before he gave Ylva something she could dream about for months to come. Loki stepped closer and gently kissed her cheek. “See you around, partner.”


End file.
